Numbers Tell Sad Story of Our Children

The statistics come flying at you like fists in a gang mugging. Today and every day in America:

* 2,900 children are born who have received no prenatal care during the first three months of their mothers’ pregnancies.

* 2,750 kids’ parents separate or divorce.

* 90 kids are removed from their homes and shoe-horned into the brimming foster-care system.

* 1.3 million latchkey kids, ages 5-14, are on their own for most of the day.

* The typical 14-year-old watches three hours of television and does one hour of homework.

* More than 2,200 kids drop out of school.

* 1,400 teen-age girls became pregnant, and 40% of them will never graduate high school.

And half of all white children and three-quarters of all African-American children spend at least part of their childhood in a single-parent home.

And that’s just the opening salvo of stats in Fortune magazine’s Aug. 10 “Special Report: Children in Crisis.”

Not that the statistics are infallible. Some of Fortune’s stats vary a bit from one story to the next. But overall, the 10 articles in the excellent package bombard readers with more than enough statistical evidence to prove that childhood in America is endangered.

Fortune approaches the crisis from a largely conservative, business-oriented angle. For instance, in “The American Family, 1992,” writer Myron Magnet blames the rebellion, promiscuity and feminism of the ‘60s for things falling apart.

That’s simplistic. Which is not to say things haven’t gone to hell as the family has fallen apart. Again, stats, from a National Center for Health Statistics study:

“Children from single-parent homes are 100% to 200% more likely than children from two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems and about 50% more likely to have learning disabilities. In the nation’s hospitals, over 80% of adolescents admitted for psychiatric reasons come from single-parent families.”

First for Women magazine, also features a special report in its Aug. 17 issue. And while it, too, is packed with sad statistics, its compilation of bite-sized anecdotes, celebrity advice and mini-stories shouldn’t be compared to Fortune’s commendable effort.

And overall, Fortune is optimistic. An article on child care finds movement afoot. Parents and corporations, large and small, are creating solutions. Time Warner, for instance, just opened a drop-in child-care center where employees can take their kids when their regular arrangements fall through.

In “Why Kids Should Learn About Work,” Alan Deutschman describes innovative training programs by business and community groups to assure that there will be a future work force.

Then there are the success stories. Shajan Clay grew up in that statistical realm in which drugs, violence and dropping out are a norm. When she was 12, she discovered the bodies of a cousin and uncle. But with the encouragement of teachers and others, she pulled through and just won a scholarship from the Children’s Defense Fund. The award is aptly titled “Beat the Odds.”

REQUIRED READING

* Anyone who still thinks that they might have misread Bush’s lips about keeping Quayle better pick up the August GQ. Joe Queenan, in an excerpt from an upcoming book, explains once and for all why on Earth Bush picked Quayle to begin with and why it is so important that he stay on the ticket.

At the moment, it might look like the Democratic Convention’s rockin’ boomer candidates are moon-walking toward the White House. If Queenan is right in his “Quayle as Cultural Memory Suppressant Theory,” however, the battle is just beginning.

Skim the part about how Queenan psychically broke on through to the other side and learned that the now-dead Door Jim Morrison is familiar with Quayle. What matters, though, is that Quayle, in a 1989 interview, had never heard of Morrison.

That makes the unhip happy. And that, in combination with an elaborate conspiracy theory Queenan spells out, might give Bush-Quayle the election.

“Quayle’s ascendancy to the second-highest office in the land,” he explains, “is a subliminal expression of Middle America’s intense desire not only to repudiate the 1960s but to purge any national memory of that decade.”

* On a more serious note, Calvin Trillin offers a poem to Clinton and Gore in the Aug. 3/10 issue of The Nation. The final lines reflect the tenor:

Baby boomers, baby boomers, yes, yes, yes.

Both these guys know how to dress.

Yeaaaa, team!

* The news weeklies don’t have much news on Bush or Clinton, but they’re still keen on Perot.

U. S. News & World Report offers what it bills as an exclusive look at Perot’s widely touted economic plan. The plan would reportedly transform this year’s $340-billion budget shortfall into an $8-billion surplus in six years. “It would,” Susan Dentzer and Jerry Buckley write, “also slay a thundering herd of political sacred cows--hiking taxes on Social Security benefits, slashing Medicare, curbing deductions on pricey home mortgages and generally offending everyone from the low-income elderly to the prosperous upper middle class.”

But it wasn’t, apparently, bashing by angry taxpayers Perot feared. In a tiny “Exclusive” in its “Periscope” department, Newsweek says Perot bailed, “above all,” because pesky news organizations--including Newsweek--were badgering him about such matters as the charge that he might have hired private investigators to check out his daughters’ boyfriends.

* Still sad that poor Perot couldn’t buy his way into the White House? Well, check out the houses he already has. The August Money takes readers on a fascinating, if belated, tour of Perot’s finances. The best parts are the photos of his four homes--worth an estimated $28.4 million--in Bermuda, Vail, North Dallas and on Lake Texoma.

* The July issue of the Journal of the Writers Guild of America West features a free-for-all debate on free speech. Such discussions, if well-balanced, are invariably circular and inconclusive. This one is well-balanced.

Still, insights arise. Marcy Kelly, president of a group called Mediascope, reports a study showing that boys with a propensity for violence become violent if exposed to violent TV, while boys with the same propensity who don’t watch violent shows don’t become violent.

“Violent stories and violent characters reinforce violent families,” she concludes.

Sheila Kuehl, managing director of the Women’s Law Center, also sees a cause-and-effect relationship between speech and violence. She argues that the expression of an idea can be a “violent act.”

And while she’d prefer people stop saying bad things on their own, if they don’t, Kuehl wants someone to stop them.

First Amendment absolutists Harlan Ellison and Allison Cross grapple with Kuehl over this issue. All three might be labeled self-righteous in their defense of their beliefs. But there’s an obvious difference. Writers Ellison and Cross clearly think that official censorship is among the most harmful acts that can befall this nation.

It is unlikely, however, that either would restrict Kuehl’s right to rabble-rouse for violence against the First Amendment.

Finally, Kelly offers the most encouraging assessment. The best protection against evil, hurtful, obscene or simply stupid stuff, she says, is increased media literacy by folks who read and watch and listen.

NEW ON NEWSSTANDS

The first issue of Ability Magazine lands on newsstands as the Americans with Disabilities Act becomes law. The bimonthly features celebrity profiles, human interest stories and information on technology and resources.

The premiere issue commits a journalistic taboo by letting advertising and public relations material bleed into editorial copy. And even that copy needs polishing. But there’s promise here.

(Six issues, $23.70. P.O. Box 4140, Irvine, Calif. 92716-9919, (714) 854-8700).